++Marching through a grimwood is never advised. Many commanders are intoxicated by the strength of their army and mistakenly think such a force to be invulnerable. One week of attrition will teach them otherwise, and already have brought a grand disaster in doing so.++

  Book 2: Chapter 35

  Apparently Anne had shared Reggie’s interest in old books, because she could read Latin almost as well as he could. Only almost though, which was something he took great satisfaction in demonstrating as they both started reading through them together. He had to admit, with her help, things were going faster. More to the point, she seemed to be getting more passionate about their findings than even he had.

  “It says here they had a way of saving people who’d lost most of their blood,” she croaked. “Called a trans…’transfunction’?”

  He peered over her shoulder. “Transfusion,” Reggie corrected. “Huh, interesting.”

  “Not interesting,” she snapped. “How could this knowledge be lost? Do you remember last year when…” She trailed off.

  “I was six feet underground last year,” Reggie reminded her. “What happened?”

  She flushed, but continued quickly enough. “Bill, one of the farmers, he caught his leg on his own scythe. Stupid mistake and he only made it by being careless, but…well, he didn’t deserve to die for it, did he? The doctors treated him, but he’d already lost so much blood by the time they got to him that even after binding the wound he was pale as a vamp…”

  “Pale as a vampire,” Reggie cut in. “Yes, I don’t care, continue.”

  “Right. Well…he died. Took a day and a half of him just lying unconscious, slowly getting weaker. Surgeon said he didn’t have enough blood in him for his body to work and it just…shut down. It tried not to, but the flesh gave in.”

  She shivered. Reggie forgot, sometimes, how laughably removed from death the average human was. He’d been closer to it every day than most, even before it took him.

  “I could’ve saved him too, you know,” Reggie pointed out. Anne’s face turned sharp and hard as a jutting pike.

  “By turning him into one of your slaves?”

  “Yeah, but only for a week or so.” He had to suppress a wince at that, if the townsfolk found out his thralls could be freed by a mere week of separation from him…no, what was he saying? They wouldn’t care about that because none of them were in a position to separate them for a full week, let alone the several he’d overstuffed them for currently. He had more to worry about regarding his thralls just being murdered in the street than that.

  Anne was talking again, though, her thoughts apparently back on the books.

  “The idea that something like this was just…forgotten.”

  “Hidden,” Reggie cut in. “It was hidden. Buried, deliberately. I’ve seen the elves do it, it’s how they stay in control. They’re scared that human numbers combined with advancing technology might actually be enough to overthrow them, so when anyone looks to be working on an especially significant jump forwards they swoop in to crush it.”

  Anne’s stare could’ve cut glass. “...Is that how you really died?”

  He bristled. “Yeah. And I’m not going to die that way again.” Reggie turned away and kept reading, suddenly in less of a mood for their conversation and wherever it was heading.

  ***

  Ajoke did not seem to recognise Ludvich. Was it even her? He had to admit, it’d been a while since they’d met, and she was acting so—

  “Die you fucking snow-monkey!”

  Okay, yeah, it was her, then how come she was trying to take his damned head off?

  “It’s me, you dumb cunt,” Ludvich snapped. He’d fallen back from one neck-swing after another, each of them a decapitating strike that he had no doubt would have felled him like an old tree should any have connected. Tier 1, not Tier 2. He’d been feeling powerful after finally surpassing his old Witchfinder limits, now he was being reminded that he was still a small fry.

  He could’ve done with that reminder before getting trapped fighting a more skilled opponent with a weapon capable of removing his limbs on every hit. Ajoke’s foot caught on something and she stumbled, not for long. A fifth of a quarter of a second maybe. Ludvich took the chance to slam a fist into her chest and watched the breath explode out of her as she flew back. The woman hadn’t even landed before he was pouncing on his own fallen weapon and snatching it back up, just in time to parry…a swing from a different enemy. Black-skinned, like Ajoke, and wielding a blade that looked every bit identical to hers, save that it was resized for the much taller woman who now wielded it.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Fuck this,” Ludvich growled, then headbutted the newcomer hard enough to smash a Worker’s facial bones right back into their brain.

  It did little more than stun the ìràwà, but that was more than enough for Ludvich. While they staggered free he dragged his elven blade along in a short slice that saw its tip scraping through chest muscles and running along their breastbone. A scream lit the air and she fell, then Ludvich stumbled back as yet more emerged from the treeline.

  And more. Eight in all, counting the wounded one, and they were encircling him with faces left sharp by anger and blades sharper still. Ludvich resisted the urge to turn and scramble around, settling instead to remain still and let his hearing warn him of any attacks threatening his flanks. Nobody moved, least of all him. A moment passed. Two. Ludvich realised beyond doubt that he wouldn’t be fighting his way out of this, then cursed.

  Time for a risk, then. A big one. He transformed back into his humanoid form, though kept his blade out.

  “I don’t want a fight with you,” he told the group. Almost laughed at his own words as he said them, because he’d given every sign of wanting a fight against the single, tiny woman he’d heard and was only just now changing his tune while surrounded by half a dozen more. None of the strangers laughed though. Their leader, the second to emerge and the one whose chest he’d slashed open, was next in speaking.

  “Drop your weapon, and we won’t have to fight.”

  “Because you can just stab me to death without risk if I’m unarmed,” he grunted.

  “Because you could make a sudden movement and kill one of us if you’re not, and so far the only one here who’s started a fight is you.” The woman seemed to have recovered well from her slash to the chest, still bleeding and clearly breathing hard, but biting back all the intense pain she must’ve been racked with. She did, Ludvich had to admit, have a point. But more importantly, she had eight swords to his one. He tossed his weapon into the dirt and scowled.

  “Nice seeing you again, Ajoke,” he grunted to the smaller woman, the second of only two present. Ajoke spat.

  “Tried to kill me just now, monkey.”

  “I can try a bit fucking harder if you want, you bitch,” he growled. “What got into your head, sneaking up on a Witchfinder?”

  He seemed to have scored a point, because even Ajoke’s own comrades shot her a few pointed looks at that.

  “What are you doing in these woods, àìkú?” the leader asked before their back-and-forth could resume. Ludvich was somehow surprised the ìràwà didn’t already know, and briefly considered lying.

  Not much point in that, though. There was no hiding the most important details at this stage.

  “Norvhan is the territory of my sire, now,” he told them. “And something, one of you I’d guess, scared the fuck out of a few of its residents in the woods, so I came out to investigate.”

  “Your sire,” Ajoke pressed. “You mean Reggie?”

  She still said his name weird, making both vowels into weighty and elongated things that seemed to stretch the word out across half a sentence.

  “Yes, I mean him.” Ludvich felt suddenly disquieted by all the gazes on him, keenly aware that he was volunteering up information on Reggie of all people. “I was injured—dying. He couldn’t do anything else to save me, so…he made a judgement call.”

  Disgust flashed across the ìràwà’s faces. Perhaps the very same look Ludvich had on his own, during those first, dazed minutes of unlife. He hadn’t even noticed how much he’d changed since joining the dead. Funny that.

  “I need to get back to my town,” he told the group. “We can continue this talk there.”

  At once, all of the ìràwà were guarded.

  “It’s a trap,” one of the men pointedly suggested. “I’d wager there’s a dozen other vampires waiting for us back there, ready to pounce.”

  “He would’ve just started running to try and lure us that way if it was the case, idiot,” Ajoke snapped at him. She withered beneath the glare of the taller woman, who then turned back to Ludvich.

  “We can’t trust you at your word on this, you understand,” she sighed.

  Ludvich shrugged. “Aye. Are you going to kill me then?”

  They actually took a minute or two to discuss it amongst themselves, while Ajoke, after a brief consultation with her allies, remained at his back with her sword ready in case he did a runner. In the end, though, Ludvich was told that he’d get to keep his head.

  “Ajoke vouched for you,” one of the men spat. “Not sure how you managed to pull one over on her, that’s what we get for bringing along a fucking woman I guess.” He paused, then his eyes flickered to the taller woman. “No insult to you, of course, captain.”

  “Of course,” the woman who apparently held a captain’s rank replied. Then she punched the man hard in his belly, actually lifting him off the ground to fly a good few feet upwards. He’d already folded into a ball by the time he landed, then spent the next few minutes painting dirt with his vomit. The captain took over speaking from there.

  “Ajoke vouched for you,” she told Ludvich. “So you’ll take Ajoke with you to your town, to be our eyes and ears there.”

  “A spy,” Ludvich replied. The woman’s lip curled.

  “If you want, but I was thinking she’d be a surveyor and scope the place out to either confirm or deny that it is what you say it is.”

  Something about this was off to him. “That’s a risk,” he frowned. “One of your number of eight? A big risk. You’re not just doing this because one among you said we could be trusted, what do you stand to gain?”

  The woman actually looked somewhat impressed at that. She buried the expression fast, as Ludvich himself would’ve done. For a few moments she said nothing, then a sigh escaped her.

  “There’s no harm in you finding out, I suppose. Your town is the target of an advancing elven army, as far as we can tell it numbers in the thousands. Mostly human soldiers, but there’s perhaps ten Circumscribers among its bodies as well. We came here to investigate, to study the forces, and perhaps to take this concentration of military power and discover what vulnerabilities were left to allow it.”

  Ludvich felt like all the blood had been squeezed from him, like he was back in his grave thrashing around and starved into madness. He stared at the woman, stared at her soldiers, then slowly made his way to a nearby rock to take a seat.

  “...Shit,” he said. Really, what more to say was there? Thousands. Ludvich knew that thousands in one army wasn’t exactly a large force, by elven standards, but it was damned big for Norvhan. Their defenders may well be outnumbered a hundred to one, literally.

  “Do you know when this army is set to arrive?” he croaked. The ìràwà exchanged a few looks with one another and seemed to have another debate. Ludvich could only guess at the nature of their conversation though, it was all spoken in a language he didn’t understand. Finally the leader resumed talking in the common tongue.

  “By our estimates, you have perhaps two months at most.”